


Viola.

by the_empty_pen



Category: Chaos Walking - Patrick Ness
Genre: "Viola", F/M, I love yous, I'm admitting it this is just fluff, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Post canon, Spoilers, barely angst, it's fluff, todd waking up, two idiots in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22772443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_empty_pen/pseuds/the_empty_pen
Summary: Coming back feels a little like breaking through a surface, I find. A bit like almost drowning in the sea and eventually finding the way back to the air and I inhale sharply and my eyes snap open.My sight is blurred, and I can barely see anything for a few seconds. No, actually, it doesn’t get better. I close them again.“Todd!”Todd. Todd, my name, that’s my name. Someone is calling me.It’s not someone.It’s her.
Relationships: Viola Eade/Todd Hewitt
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Viola.

**Author's Note:**

> I recently read the three short stories and in snowscape i was so close to losing my shit becasue Viola really just went "Todd is..." with sad face and tricked wilf and lee and I was already prepared to sob my heart out because of ness killing todd and then I swiped to the next page and read the word "Alive" and I don't think I've ever been that relieved in my entire life. God. My heart.
> 
> So yeah this is just me dealing with my chaos walking feelings tbh I fadgjklsfjfkhdjfgdklfg I can't.
> 
> Have fun because I usually don't write this kind of fluff.

Coming back feels a little like breaking through a surface, I find. A bit like almost drowning in the sea and eventually finding the way back to the air and I inhale sharply and my eyes snap open.

My sight is blurred, and I can barely see anything for a few seconds.  
No, actually, it doesn’t get better.  
I close them again.

“Todd!”

Todd. Todd, my name, that’s my name. Someone is calling me.  
It’s not someone.  
It’s her.  
 _Viola_.

My noise is probably raging from all those thoughts in my head – why am I here, why is she here, what is _here_ , why does everything hurt so effing much, why does my noise sound so different when I hear it and why do I hear so much but I can almost control what I hear and-

I open my eyes again when I realize that none of this matters cause she is here.

And then I only hear her name in my own noise and how much I love her and I’m almost embarrassed by the simple thought of it but I ain’t caring too much right now.

“Todd! Todd, you’re awake! You hear me, right? What a stupid question, I know you do!”

In the next moment I find warmth around me and it’s almost like going back into that sea of warmth and that sea of voices except that it isn’t a voice – it’s quiet.

My favorite kind of quiet.   
_My_ quiet.

Her smell is all around me and now it’s not sweat or sickness, she’s healthy and smelling like flowers and like Spackle.

“That’s because we are with the Spackle, Todd, you idiot”, she sobs into my ear and presses her cheek against mine. It’s wet with tears.

Yeah, I’m realizing that now when I notice the noise outside this… tent thing or whatever it is. My eyes still aren’t really funcshuning so I don’t even try to guess.  
It’s Spackle noise.  
But it sounds like my noise.

Yeah, of course, I’m with the Spackle, Ben was with the Spackle, I’m probably woven into The Voice too, ain’t I? It feels like I’m part of it.  
Truly part of it but it feels good and calming and as if I belong.

Something he hadn’t succeeded in-

I try saying something and open my mouth but it ends with me coughing because of how awfully dry my throat is and I get some of her hair into my mouth and she just chuckles at my misery.

“You want to drink something?”, she asks, her voice soft but broken by tears and she looks back at me and that’s when my eyes focus.

It’s _Viola_ , it’s truly her, with longer hair and she looks so much healthier, finally put on some weight-

“Hey.”

I don’t mean it in a bad way and judging by her smile I can tell that she knows that. I can read her, I can still read her after all of it.

He comes back into my noise and for a moment I wonder if he is dead, but I doubt that the fish spat him out again (did the mayor taste good at least?) and Viola shakes her head.

“It’s ok. We’re at peace, Todd. We’re finally at peace. Everything’s fine, don’t worry.”

I think I’d be crying if I wasn’t so effing done with my life. My entire body hurts and I raise my hand a few centimeters to touch her and bury my hand in her shirt, but it falls down because it feels like lead and it feels as if a damned horse is stepping on it over and over again and breaking my bones one by one.

“You better don’t move. You’ve been in coma for a few months, Todd. Take it slow, please. You’ve got all the time in the world now.”

Peace.  
Is there actual peace now? It’s hard for me to believe after everything we’ve been through, after everyone we lost (Cillian and Manchee and Davy and the Mayor and Davy and Manchee and Cillian-).

But she’s saying this. And I’m trusting her because I know Viola doesn’t lie to me cause that right here is her, my quiet, the person who made me weep like a baby the first time I saw her because everything about her was confusing.

“Your noise is a mess, Todd”, she whispers, sits up, brushes the hair out of my face and smiles down at me.  
I raise my hand just enough to reach her thigh and I pinch it wit my middle finger because the other fingers are too short.  
I don’t know why I did that, I guess I just want to be sure that she’s fine and real and _Viola_.

“I am, idiot. Here, I’ve got some water, you should drink something”, she grasps a glass from the table next to the bed (which I’m only seeing now because my eyes were way too preoccupied with looking at her, at my Viola) and her other hand sneaks below my head to raise it up.

The water on my split lips is cold and I almost freeze at the touch, swallowing hurts but I ain’t effing caring about it because it also feels so damn good in my throat.

It takes a few minutes until the glass is empty and I feel some strength surging through my body at last.

“Help me sit up”, I rasp out and I want to add a please, but the pain in my throat and on my tongue is too much to handle, but she can read it in my noise anyways.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

I look at her and her eyes and she’s so terribly beautiful it takes my breath away and I inhale just as sharply as when I woke up because whoever decided to make that girl so beautiful deserves the world.

I don’t effing care if she can hear all this, I really effing don’t. I’ve never loved a person so much like I love her and she just keeps smiling even when she hears all those embarrassing things but I don’t care.

She heaves me up just a little and the world starts spinning, her hand remains on my cheek and her fingers touch my wet cheek (it’s her tears, definitely not mine), the world focuses again and I come back to the surface again.  
She’s so quiet it almost quiets down The Voice, too.

“I love you.”

My heart jumps at those three simple words and I know it’s true because of how she looks at me, then brings me into a sitting position without spending another minute on what she’s just said.  
I’m almost a little disappointed that she isn’t blushing or being embarrassed like I am because I would’ve liked to see it, but everything I get is a frown.

“I missed you, but your Noise is kind of awkward to listen to, really.”

I can see she doesn’t mean her words, again.  
Or possibly she does.  
A little.

I smile, too. I’m noticing this now.

My body feels like someone dragged it through mud and if I hadn’t seen Aaron die, I would’ve thought that it was his fault somehow. Or that I’ve come down with a fever again.  
But I was in coma so that probably explains it. 

“I love you”, I say, too, out loud and now she gets embarrassed.  
It doesn’t make sense, but her cheeks are flaming red in the course of a few seconds and her eyes are opened wide and I look into them and it’s the exact same eyes I saw back then in the swamp, but at the same time they’re so different.

We’ve both grown older because of what we’ve been through and it shows in her eyes too, there’s pain and worry and love and I take her hand now, using the bit of energy to touch her and feel her skin on mine.  
I’m not smiling anymore and I notice that my cheeks are even wetter now and that’s definitely _my_ tears.

“Todd-“

“Viola”, I say and then I say it again in my noise but not as sharp as I used to with the mayor but I pronounce it so softly in my thoughts, form the word only in my mind and then she’s hugging me and sobbing into my shoulder again.

I try to hold her as much as I can but really, it’s not a lot.

I let her cry. There ain’t no much more I can do anyways, huh? I’ve made my girl cry. I’d be crying too if she had been in coma for months.

“I thought you were going to die and I was so close to starting another war Todd but I didn’t for you and here you are and you’re alive and don’t you ever dare do this to me again, ok? You ain’t gonna leave me again, Todd effing Hewitt.”

I laugh at the last sentence because she’s gotten around to using all our expresshuns and I bury my face in her neck again.  
I love this girl so much.

“I know it now, you’ve stated this often enough”, she mumbles but her voice is still choked by tears and I know she can’t get enough of it even when I’d be thinking it all the time without excepshun.

“Yeah, you’ve got a point”

I have to laugh again and it still effing hurts but I can’t care today. I can’t care about pain when I’ve been shot already and attacked by someone right into my mind enough times.

“How’s everyone else?”

“Fine”, she says, clings to me and I’m probably clinging back with the little power I have left.  
It’s warm.  
Viola.  
She’s warm.  
Warm in my noise and warm on my body and warm in my heart.

“Wilf and Lee and some others are out exploring. Ben is fine. We kept reading your Ma’s book to you and we spend all the time with you and he should be here in two hours but I bet the Spackle have already heard you and are getting him. Oh, Todd, oh, Todd. I don’t know what I would’ve done if… if…”

She doesn’t dare speaking it out loud, but I know what she means because I know she doesn’t want to say that I could’ve been dead.

I’m not.  
I’m alive.  
After all, I’m still alive and I’m so alive it hurts because I feel it in every nerve and every fiber of my being.

And I can almost hear her noise, I think, but maybe it’s just that she’s sobbing.

I understand her.  
I know her.  
I think of her as Viola.   
She’s not anyone’s girl because she’s my girl.  
My Viola.  
The quiet in the swamp.

 _Viola_.


End file.
